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race card Tag

Posted by William A. Jacobson on May 09, 2014 36 Comments
Complaints about privilege are growing tiresome. It's the shallow call of those who can't win an argument on the merits. It's a cop-out. It's an epidemic on campuses, and in the "white privilege" industrial complex where careers and incomes depend on getting universities and donors to pony up big $$$ to support conferences and academic slots. We saw it last night on Twitter as an anti-Israel divestment resolution at UC-Davis ended in a tie, which meant it did not pass: Ramesh Ponnuru writes about this phenomenon at Bloomberg, 'Check Your Privilege' Means 'Shut Your Mouth':

Posted by William A. Jacobson on April 23, 2014 18 Comments
On the assumption that Hillary will be running, it's going to be interesting to see how liberals who attacked Hillary in 2008 will say, "that was then, this is now." One particularly nasty attack on Hillary was to accuse her of being a White Power advocate and using Klan talking points.   That line of attack, routinely and falsely used against Republicans, seemed to reflect Bill Clinton's complaint that the "race card" was played against Hillary. It came in response to this video in which Hillary opined on the significance of polling as reported by AP (h/t John Ekdahl) The attack appeared at the liberal website The Daily Banter from a liberal blogger who works for Media Matters but blogs both at Media Matters and independently. Hillary White Power Clinton Daily Bantor Oliver Willis 2008
Hillary White Power Clinton:

Posted by William A. Jacobson on April 12, 2014 9 Comments
Oh, they thought they had Fox News right where they wanted it.  The proof they'd been waiting for that Fox News was racist. Heather Childers on Fox & Friends First mistakenly referred to U. Conn. as the NAACP champs rather than NCAA champs. There was pure joy in Mudville.  As of this writing, this TPM video has over 800,000 views: The Raw Story headlined it as "A Freudian Slip?" (emphasis in original):
The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People — or NAACP — is a civil rights organization focusing on equality for African-Americans and other minorities. At least 10 of the 15 players on the winning UConn team were African-Americans.
The never subtle Gawker proclaimed it outright racism:

Posted by William A. Jacobson on April 05, 2014 19 Comments
I don't know much about Chris McDaniel, who is challenging Thad Cochran in the Mississippi Republican Senate primary. I also don't know much about Thad Cochran. I haven't studied the race, or taken a position. I don't back a challenger just for the sake of backing a challenger. The National Republican Senatorial Committee, however, backs an incumbent just for the sake of backing an incumbent. NRSC is, in Prof. Reynold's words, "an incumbent-protection club. That’s basically its job." Which means backing any Republican Senate incumbent, no matter how bad and no matter how good the challenger. That means Arlen Specter over Pat Toomey; Bob Bennett over Mike Lee, and so on. Brad Dayspring is the Communications Director and Strategist for NRSC. While his Twitter feed has the obligatory disclaimer that his tweets are his own, he does seem to use his Twitter feed as part of his NRSC mission. A tweet on April 3 by Dayspring about McDaniel accused McDaniel of "associat[ing] with white nationalists & segregationists" based on a linked story at Talking Points Memo. (H/t The Other McCain) The TPM story reported that McDaniel backed out of an event after it was revealed -- by a local pro-Cochran blog -- that one of the vendors displaying at the event was pro-segregation. That's it. No allegation that McDaniels himself was pro-segregation, or speaking at a pro-segregation event. Only that there was a vendor at the event. That's the sort of guilt by remote association we expect TPM and others to use against Republicans. Robert Stacy McCain, who has an extensive write up on it, correctly states:
The attempt to turn this into a scandal is like saying that if a candidate campaigns at a county fair, he thereby endorses every rip-off carnival game at the fair.
It's not surprising that NBC picked up on it, which Dayspring also tweeted out, asserting that McDaniel was not vetted:

Posted by William A. Jacobson on March 04, 2014 18 Comments
Badger Pundit has the rundown on a debate at Harvard Law School over the proposition in the title of this post, Epic smackdown of affirmative action at Harvard — following debate, audience’s opposition rises nearly a third. It's a discussion that people on campuses don't like to have. Good for Harvard Law School for hosting such a debate with well-qualified speakers arguing each side. Too often the argument against affirmative action is denegrated as racism. A speaker in favor of the proposition argued that affirmative action is an "epic policy failure" because it actually hurts -- not helps -- minority achievement through lower graduation and professional accomplishment rates. This is commonly called the mismatch effect, as to which there has been a debate in law schools for years.  When University of the South Professor E. Douglass Williams published an article in The Journal of Empirical Legal Studies, Do Racial Preferences Affect Minority Learning in Law Schools? (2013)(pdf.), I had a chance to communicate with him, although I never got around to writing it up as a post.  Here's the Abstract of his article:
An analysis of the The Bar Passage Study (BPS) reveals that minorities are both less likely to graduate from law school and less likely to pass the bar compared to whites even after adjustments are made for group· differences in academic credentials. To account for these adjusted racial gaps in performance, some researchers put forward the "mismatch hypothesis," which proposes that students learn less when placed in learning environments where their academic skills are much lower than the typical student. This article presents new results from the BPS that account for both measurement-error bias and selection-onunobservables bias that makes it more difficult to find a mismatch effect if in fact one exists. I find much more evidence for mismatch effects than previous research ang report magnitudes from mismatch effects more than sufficient to explain racial gaps in performance.
Here is part of our email exchange:
WAJ: I just want to confirm your ultimate finding in layman’s terms: There is evidence of a mismatch effect, and that effect is sufficiently pronounced as to account for differences in bar passage rates. Do I have that right? EDW: Yes this is accurate. Much of the difference in bar passage rates by race is explained by differences in academic credentials. But a significant gap still persists after controlling for these entering credentials. It is this remaining gap that the mismatch effect found in the paper can explain.
Some other reading on the mismatch effect and related controversy:

Posted by Mandy Nagy on January 04, 2014 63 Comments
It's been a long week for Melissa Harris-Perry. The MSNBC host took a lot of heat for this segment on her show last weekend in which she moderated a panel of comedians in offering a caption to a Romney family photo that featured Governor Romney holding his adopted grandson, Kieran, who is black. The segment devolved into senseless mocking - as Professor Jacobson previously noted, "To the race-obsessed minds at MSNBC, the fact that Mitt Romney’s son and daughter-in-law adopted a black child is something to mock." Mitt Romney family Christmas photo 2013 Backlash ensued and Melissa Harris-Perry later apologized online in a series of tweets. On her program today, Harris-Perry again made an apology for that segment, while fighting back tears.  Below is an excerpt from that apology.  Video is after the jump.
Now given my own family history, I identify with that picture and I intended to say positive and celebratory things about it, but whatever the intent was, the reality is that the segment proceeded in a way that was offensive. And showing the photo in that context, that segment, was poor judgment. So without reservation or qualification, I apologize to the Romney family. Adults who enter into public life implicitly consent to having less privacy. But their families, and especially their children, should not be treated callously or thoughtlessly. My intention was not malicious, but I broke the ground rule that families are off-limits, and for that I am sorry. Also, allow me to apologize to other families formed through transracial adoption, because I am deeply sorry that we suggested that interracial families are in any way funny or deserving of ridicule. On this program we are dedicated to advocating for a wide diversity of families. It is one of our core principles, and I am reminded that when we are doing so, it must always be with the utmost respect.
(h/t to Newsbusters for the transcript; and to TheRightScoop for staying on the story)

Posted by William A. Jacobson on January 01, 2014 40 Comments
Melissa Harris-Perry is apologizing profusely for the panel discussion over which she presided, dedicated to mocking the image above. https://twitter.com/MHarrisPerry/status/418008066651455488 https://twitter.com/MHarrisPerry/status/418010148301320192 https://twitter.com/MHarrisPerry/status/418010599662960640 I have no idea what is in Harris-Perry's heart, but she has a long history of making racial issues out of non-racial events:

Posted by William A. Jacobson on December 30, 2013 75 Comments

Well, just about everything. A young child holding her baby brother's hand.  A mother holding her children. The mother happens to be Mitt Romney's daughter-in-law. To the race-obsessed minds at MSNBC, the fact that Mitt Romney's son and daughter-in-law adopted a black child is something to mock. The focus...

Posted by William A. Jacobson on December 28, 2013 23 Comments
We have dealt the "white privilege" so many times here, I probably should start a "white privilege" tag. Michael Eric Dyson is a frequent commentator on MSNBC. He's a Professor of Sociology at Georgetown. He is quick to make accusations impunigning others with accusations of explicit or implicit racism: And he has the privilege of accusing other of "white privilege" when he wants to win an argument:

Posted by William A. Jacobson on December 10, 2013 8 Comments
We covered the Alabama last second loss to Auburn.  Even that game became political when the Alabama student newspaper ran the cartoon featured above. James Taranto of The Wall Street Journal reports:
This isn't a sports column, but there's a reason we opened with a nine-day-old play-by-play. Back in Tuscaloosa, the Alabama loss led to a kerfuffle last week involving the student newspaper, the perplexingly named Crimson White. Its cartoonist drew a strip, published Thursday, depicting the final play under the title "This Is What Happens in OBAMA'S AMERICA." The last two words were in massive letters, drawn in horror-movie style, with what was supposed to look like blood dripping from them. Later that day, editor Mazie Bryant posted "A Statement From the Editor-in-Chief" in which she explained that "the cartoon was meant as satire . . . as a lighthearted look at some of the more absurd explanations given for Alabama's collapse at the end of the Iron Bowl game against Auburn last Saturday."Only in Obama's America could something so obvious have eluded anyone. "Unfortunately," Bryant noted, the cartoon "has been perceived by many readers as having racist intentions."
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